Dear Editor,<\/p>\n
A PETA eyewitness investigation of Liberty Research, Inc., a Barton contract laboratory that tests veterinary products on dogs and cats, has resulted in video footage and photographs showing that dogs and cats were denied adequate veterinary care, killed in slow and stressful ways, and not separated from other stressed animals, who injured them.<\/p>\n
In response, PETA is calling on the company’s customers – including Merial, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and schools such as Michigan State University and the universities of Pittsburgh, Florida, and Louisville – to reconsider commissioning experiments at the facility and purchasing animals from the company’s breeding site just outside Waverly.<\/p>\n
In experiments sponsored by companies such as Bayer and Merck, dogs and cats were injected with drugs and exposed to viruses and then killed or used for additional tests. A worker drilled into the skulls of 30 dogs – some of who hadn’t been adequately anesthetized and whimpered during the process – and injected distemper virus into their brains. An insecticide and massive doses of an opioid were also injected into dogs, even though well-established animal-free testing methods exist for these substances.<\/p>\n
“These dogs and cats are just like the ones who share our homes, and Liberty Research should be shut down for treating them like pieces of disposable laboratory equipment,” says PETA Research Associate Dr. Emily Trunnell. “PETA is calling on Liberty Research customers to review our evidence and decide whether they will continue to fund this hellhole.”<\/p>\n
In the laboratory, cats were kept in severely crowded, barren conditions in windowless buildings. A cat named Jade, who was left briefly paralyzed by seizures, was left without care for nearly four weeks before a worker finally gave him a fatal injection in his heart – while he was possibly still able to feel pain. It took other workers more than seven minutes and four injections to kill a fully conscious, gasping, and bloodied dog.<\/p>\n